"Preferences are funny things..."
Kennywood is almost exactly 200 miles from my house, as the sedan cruises. Just a little longer these days thanks to the never-ending construction in Pittsburgh that has the Ft. Pitt bridge closed. Anyway, 400 miles is about as far as I can manage and still make it a day trip, and that's pushing it a bit. But I really wanted to get back to Kennywood, and I knew that I only had a couple of weekends left before Kennywood closes for the season. As far as I'm concerned, the Phantom Fright Nights don't count...I live too far away to visit for evening-only limited operation.
When I got to Kennywood, I witnessed an object lesson in preferred parking. I still don't understand this. The lower level of Kennywood's parking lot was almost completely full. A steady stream of drivers was happily forking over $4 to park in the preferred parking area on the first level, approximately two city blocks...the full street frontage of Kennywood Park...away from the ticket booths. These people were paying $4 to park right next to the parking lot entrance at the extreme downriver (west?) end of the parking lot.
I thought this to be rather silly. Rather than trying to cram my car into the preferred parking area, I drove on up the hill. The second level of the parking lot was nearly full, which was fine with me. I know what I prefer, so for $0 I parked on the third level, five rows back from the chairlift terminal. I rode the chairlift down the hill (is it Kennywood's highest ride?) and landed gently just about 50' from the park gate.
Kennywood is gradually becoming a P-O-P park. General admission is now up to around $9, and they've finally instituted a twilight discount for the POP plan. There are more and more restrictions on who can buy general admission, and slowly, POP is becoming the norm for Kennywood. As long as their demographic keeps getting older and their business continues to depend on the big picnics, they will have a general admission option. But they're looking more and more like a P-O-P park every season.
The park was crowded. The line for the Jack Rabbit, for indtance, not only extended all the way down the hill and back up to the midway, but also wrapped around the front of the station and reached all the way to the bottom of the platform ramp. Next door, the Racer queue was full, and extended past the Log Jammer queue almost to the Star Stand. Where did all these people come from? I've seen smaller crowds in this park with twice as many cars in the parking lot. Well, maybe not twice. But you get the idea.
A wander around the park revealed that everyone was apparently waiting in line for Jack Rabbit and Racer. So instead of starting there, I went straight for Phantom's Revenge. There...uh...nothing was happening. The line was backed up to the bottom of the bridge, and stopped. People were exiting through the entrance. But the operator at the entrance hadn't said anything...
Just then, a train started up the lift, and I knew exactly what had happened. Both trains were now running, and Phantom's Revenge had turned into a green-and-purple people eater. Just what was needed about now. The result was a short wait for the back seat. You know, I was never a phan of the Steel Phantom. It was a gimmick ride, built to fulfill specific, well-thought-out criteria which had everything to do with marketing and with meeting perceived needs. It was the world's fastest roller coaster, and because it replaced the popular Laser Loop, it had to include inversions. It was easy enough to sell: World's fastest roller coaster, with a drop longer than the one on Magnum XL-200, with four inversions to replace the two on the earlier coaster. But while that all makes perfect sense, it unfortunately has very little to do with building a great roller coaster. Cedar Point had taken a bold step, building a tall, fast coaster with zero inversions at a time when "loopier = better" seemed to be the way of the world. But then Cedar Point still had its Corkscrew. Kennywood would be removing its old looper, and the tumblers had to have something to ride! Without the benefit of history, Kennywood constructed an impressive coaster which proved to have a remarkably short shelf life. It wasn't a great coaster, destined to be a classic. The novelty of going upside-down has been replaced with the realization that while it looks neat, it really isn't that much fun. Enthusiasts, park officials, and even average park visitors have learned the truth. They've stood the old logic on its head. Phantom's Revenge goes back to the old rules, the rules that brought us the Jack Rabbit and the Thunderbolt. It's all about speed, close clearances, excitement, and airtime.
Phantom's Revenge is a wonderful ride. In many ways, it's everything that Steel Phantom was not. Where Steel Phantom shot down the cliff, turned around, and did the rest of its gymnastics above the station, except for possibly the very peak of the third hill, once Phantom's Revenge heads down the second drop, I'm not sure that any of its track is above the station roofline. That means the ride has the potential to finish at 50 MPH. It's built to not lose any speed...and it doesn't, as the unique hybrid trains cruise smoothly but violently over the course. It's a great ride in the same way that Magnum is a great ride, as it has truly exciting elements in a very re-rideable package. An added benefit for Kennywood is that it has good capacity as well, a factor of increasing importance as Kennywood becomes a POP park. Perhaps as the ride ages they can come up with a less inconvenient queue routing, but apart from that, what's not to like about this ride?
I rushed out of Lost Kennywood, stopping only to take a quick ride on the Wave Swinger (and failing to ride the Wipeout, though noting that solo riders were being allowed aboard...I should have jumped at the Chance!). I narrowly escaped getting drenched by the water cannon positioned around the Pirat(e), and I noticed that they got the Musik Express put back together again. I also noticed that they fixed King Kahuna. Well, sort of, anyway. It now runs something that looks like a proper Top Spin program, but the fountains were running in "night mode" (=non-drenching) all day. I rode the Enterp...er...Volcano and the Flying Carpet. Is it my imagination, or has the emergence of Volcano Valley eliminated the mid-afternoon maintenance shutdown of the Enterprise, Phantom, Pirat(e), and Bayern Kurve? Speaking of the Bayern Kurve, I still say it is simply wrong to operate that ride without The Horn.
Up in the main arcade, Kennywood has a Roller Coaster Tycoon pinball machine, which I played a couple of times without too much success. Its playability suffers first of all from excessive glare at the top of the playfield...coming from the top of the backglass, and second from a really nasty out-hole adjacent to the left-hand ball return. It's set up so that unless it's coming off the ramp, the ball will NEVER willingly go down the ball return and will always head for the drain instead. Kind of like the "elephant" drain on Cyclone, only worse.
I finally made it around to the Jack Rabbit. It was...well, it was the Jack Rabbit. It's short, it's simple, and it's got one of the greatest moments ever on a wood coaster. What more can I say? I still think they should have used the old hand-levers to control the computer, but hey, nobody asked me.
In accordance with Sandborg's First Law of Kennywood, I followed up my Jack Rabbit ride with a ride on the Racer. This has to be the only park I've been to where the racing coaster is also the coaster with the lowest total hourly capacity. The crew wasn't helping things much, as they were not preloading the platform, and the queue was still overflowing almost to the old Whip pavilion. Once aboard, though, I was shocked and surprised. The Kennywoodies are always well-maintined and operating in near perfect condition. Most parks with wood coasters could probably learn a thing or two from Kennywood. When someone tells me how great some ungreased spine-rattling wood coaster is running, I always indicate that the person should visit Kennywood to see how wood coasters are supposed to run. So you can see why I was amazed when the Racer not only ran slow, but also literally buzzed, vibrating unpleasantly through the entire course. I've experienced this before on Racer, and I have no idea what causes it, but I know from experience that the mediocre ride I got on this visit was far from typical for the Racer. Mediocre is hardly the word for it. Racer was simply sub-par. The way it was running, I didn't care if I got back to it or not.
Thunderbolt was another story. I've always liked Thunderbolt, even though on the whole it really isn't my style of coaster. I don't know, something about it that's just neat. When I got to the platform, another solo rider was waiting for me for a change, and we got a really good ride with about twice as much airtime as I normally expect from this ride. Thunderbolt was running really well this afternoon, and it had only a short wait.
I had just ridden a Crazy Mouse the day before at the Ohio State Fair, and the line for the Exterminator was a bit of a turn-off, so I enbded up not riding that one on this visit. But I circled the park numerous times and rode just about every flat ride in the park, along with numerous rides on Phantom's Revenge and Jack Rabbit, easily the two best coasters the park has to offer. In honor of the Fall Fantasy, the band organ on the carousel was playing Christmas music, an ominous reminder that Labor Day and the end of summer is only a couple of weeks away. Ewwww...and we never even got any warm weather! Anyway, the other thing that comes with the Fall Fantasy is the big parade in the early evening. I've seen this parade lot larger, so the participating band members don't fully explain the large crowd, but there were plenty of people both marching and watching anyway. After the parade, I rode Phantom's Revenge again, played a couple of games of pinball, and ended on the Jack Rabbit. Closing time still hadn't been announced when I left, but it was approaching 10:00pm when I rode the lift back up to my car for the challenging drive home. It was a good day at Kennywood. I'll be back again next season.
--Dave
Althoff, Jr.
